Average Jo-ette

Average Jo-ette.

Just an average mum, living in an average town.

For my Honours Project this year, I wanted to design and develop the concept for an animated series based around the life of a single parent mother called Jo.

Admittedly it was far too much for a single person to take on. I didn't expect to have a finished 10 minute immaculate production quality episode ready for the big screen, but to me, this was the whole reason I wanted to go to uni. I wanted to see wether I would ever be capable of writing and animating my own series, it was something i've dreamed of since i was so young and the only way to try to do that, was to soldier on relentlessly.

So I did.

*fairy ftw*

I managed to develop and script the first 3 episodes for the series, along with a good 5 or 6 notebooks of concepts or ideas or random happenings to add here or there, which was awesome because a lot of it was just random happenings and thoughts picked up through my own day to day life.

I designed, developed, modelled, textured, rigged, lip-synced and animated the 3 main characters (Jo, Miss McQuayle & Tanya) including background stories and character profiles, I modelled & textured the school environment & park, Jo's home, street & car. 

And in the last month I recorded and edited the dialogue for each character, SFX and theme music as my sound guy mysteriously vanished mid february.

'Thanks mister audio guy' *ThumbsUp*

With some post production help from a fantastic friend of mine Steve Millar, the final piece to be submitted was a very amateur but 'complete' 2 minute 30 second extract of the first episode.

I wish I had more time and energy to work on the visual style and learn more about lighting and rendering, and spend more time on texturing, I maybe could have had it looking a lot better, but alas, not to worry, there's still plenty time for all that.

The final outcome was not to have a complete fantastic looking piece, although this would have been absolutely fantastic! But more, I wanted to learn the practical side to developing, directing and producing a series, and being that this was my last year at university, and having the masses of university resources available to me, I would possibly never have that time or that opportunity open to me again.

It was a project I felt passionate about as a mother and as an artist, passion to me, was the most important thing.

But until I find the time to finish it off, I'll mostly be working on my rigging & animation skills.

Pipe dreams don't put food on the table.

=]

Some screenshots.

I'll be the first to admit that it's not the most amazing piece of animation or lipsyncing or modelling, or rigging, or texturing OR lighting OR rendering LoL!! =D

but I did it =] and I graduated, with 2:1 Honours.

Awesome.

*smiles*